WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
William Shakespeare was just a familiar unfamiliar name to me before I entered Dr. Ikhlas' class. I mean, he was everywhere, on the news, in the books, and on every bookshelf in the library. No matter where you were, in a kampung in Kedah or amidst the hustle and bustle of Kuala Lumpur City. From Africa to New York. The world spoke of Shakespeare but within me, I never knew him deep down. William Shakespeare was just a name of a great playwright.
Even in cartoons like The Fairly Oddparents and in Disney movies, he was mentioned and compared to. The most prominent issue people would talk about him was the fact that he wrote Romeo and Juliet, one of the greatest love stories ever told. Some scholars even doubt the quality of his work making it a heated issue being discussed around the world. Was Shakespeare a fraud?
I believe a documentary was made on this issue on National Geographic. It was very elitist the fact that people doubt his works because of his education (Shakespeare never had formal education. He did not go to university.) This goes to show how Shakespeare went against the stereotype of someone who came from what was considered as the ''ghetto''. I came to know more about Shakespeare in Dr Ikhlas' class and I was very fortunate to learn more about this legendary writer. Shakespeare, in my opinion was a humanist. His plays were speaking mostly about people and the people who strayed away from God. It was no secret that Romeo and Juliet committed suicide, the act forbidden by their religion, proving their love towards one another led them subconsciously go against God's commands.
I was intrigued by the story of how their love came to be, to a point of death. It showed how strong their love was, that the death of one would bring full sorrow that the other is willing to take their own life. It is not in a way ''stupid'' as some people claim it to be. Those people,in my opinion, need to have a fuller understanding on what Shakespeare was trying to convey through Romeo and Juliet.
Shakespeare, as I mentioned, turned out to be a songwriter too. He wrote the song ''It Was A Lover and His Lass'. During our lecture in class, Dr. Ikhlas had shown us a video from Youtube of a female opera singer singing the song. I find it very wonderful that I found out something new about the legendary writer. I knew he wrote many plays and I have never realised the psychological complexity inhabited in his characters. Shakespeare was keen on inscribing social explorations through characters with different backgrounds. I.e The Jews. and also with people of colour in Othello.
Besides these wonderful facts, I also found out that Shakespeare's sonnets were being published much later than when he wrote them. He wrote beautiful sonnets and my current favourite has to be Sonnet 116. I love the lines
'' Admit impediments: love is not love,
Which alters when alteration finds''
I don't know if it was the time of the month, or something else, but his words were truly relatable to my feelings when I heard it that fine day in class. Sexuality wise, it was also questioned and argued whether or not Shakespeare was a homosexual. He wrote many sonnets for a young man. In my opinion, Shakespeare was and always will be one of the greatest writers of our time and it need not to be an issue if he was gay or not.
by Ivana Qartika Binti Shamsuddin 189207
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